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It all started with an agreement with the Russian music authorities and on the suggestion of Mauro Corticelli (an impresario from Bologna), to asked the composer to write a new opera for the imperial theatre. Verdi choose Don Alvaro o La fuerza de sino by the Spaniard Angel Perez de Saavedra for his subject and libretto and contacted to Piave to set the work right away.

On the evening of 10th November 1862 La forza del destino was finally staged at St. Petersburg's Imperial Theatre, obtaining resounding success. The performance was "excellent", according to what Verdi wrote to Tito Ricordi in his telegraphic account of the soirre. The Czar Alexander II, who could not see the first performances due to illness, attended on the fourth evening, and summoned the Maestro to congratulate him in person. La forza del destino is, indeed an experimental creation by a composer who was already mature but still looking for new incentives and challenges.